Chains keep their heads looking at the cave wall in front of them, where they watch a play of shadows. Where are the shadows coming from? The shadows are cast from a fire behind the prisoners. These shadows are all the prisoners know.
Thus, Plato tells us: “All in all, then, what the prisoners would take for true reality is nothing other than the shadows.” Plato then asks what would happen if one of the prisoners were freed and was able to see the happenings behind them.
The article further analyzes the analogy and reviews the Dutch artist Jan Saenredam’s (1565–1607) engraving regarding this analogy. You can read this interpretation in the article linked above. What struck me as profound in this article is the following statement:
“To me, what’s interesting about the allegory is that Plato’s search for truth requires a backward movement out of the cave. If the figures in the cave’s shadows stand up, move forward to get close to the shadows on the wall, and study them intensely, they never move forward or make progress: the wall in front of them will always stop them.”
“Plato says: “The realm revealed through sight should be likened to the prison dwelling. ... And if you think of the ... seeing of things above as the upward journey of the soul to the intelligible realm, you won’t mistake my intention.”
“Ironically, progress occurs when the figures move back from the wall and its shadows, back from the fire that casts them, back until they exit the cave, and then above, back from the world.”
“Since Plato proposes two types of truth here, a visual truth and an intellectual one, we can also presume this backward movement to be from the outer world to the inner world, a journey few are willing to take.”
“How can this movement backward help us as we seek to reach within and search for truth? What does moving backward in the search to find truth say about the nature of truth?”
Interesting questions to meditate upon.